The industrial machine that was the Copper Empire was nourished almost solely by steam. From locomotives to electric power plants everything here was powered by superheated water – either directly or indirectly. Because of this you would expect that we would come across a great deal of evidence of those steam-generating facilities in our travels. But we don’t. Boiler house remains are notoriously low-profile, and the boilers themselves would have been scrapped decades ago. Thats why it was such a shocker to find what we did along the banks of the Eagle River – a boiler.

Manifesting itself as a long iron cylinder this old boiler was sitting on its side at the base of a steep hillside several dozen feet from the river’s edge. It was half buried in a generation worth of run-off from the hill above, leaving only half of its girth visible above the dirt and leaves. Upon its discovery our first thought quickly turned to its origin – where did it come from?

Mines utilized two basic types of boilers. The first was a stationary type, and would have been bolted down inside a boiler house. These boilers produced steam for use by the mines many steam engines such as hoists or compressors. The second type was the locomotive boiler, used to produce steam for use by a railroad engine. While this boiler could have been either type, our first thoughts centered on its proximity to the nearby Phoenix Mill ruins. Could this be one of the mill’s boilers?

Here’s a look at what those mill boiler’s most likely looked like. These are boilers from the Central Mine, left amazingly intact in the mine’s old boiler house. These were probably installed in the 1860′s, roughly the same time the Ashbed Phoenix Mill would have been constructed. These boilers are first-generation technology known as tube or cylinder boilers. These boilers were actually two separate parts, placed together in a brick-lined “oven”. Coal or wood fires stoked in lower fire boxes would heat the inside of the “oven” and in turn the iron cylinders of water set within them.

If this boiler we found was from the mill, we should expect it to look similar to these at Central.

Taking a closer look at one of the boiler’s ends revealed the same split door design seen in the boilers from Central. So far so good. Behind the door, however, we stumbled across our first discrepancy. Instead of open space as we would expect we were greeted with the ends of a dozen or so “tubes”. These tubes ran horizontally along the length of the boiler and there opening were set a few inches from the hinged doorway.

At the other end of the boiler yet another problem in the form of a small door set into the cylinder’s end. It looked very much like the door to a fire box, which also wouldn’t be found in a tube boiler. Tube boiler’s had fire boxes separate from the boiler itself.

More troubles. Just behind that possible fire box door the boiler had been torn open allowing us to get a look inside. Its hard to see here, but there was a definite iron box set into this end of the boiler with a series of flat walls. Protruding into the back of the box were those dozen or so tubes seen at the boiler’s opposite end. The bottom of the box, along with the bottom of the boiler itself, was missing here.

Also odd was this funnel shaped item attached to the boiler’s front end on its upper half. A small opening is visible on its top.

By this time it was clear to us that this wasn’t a simple tube boiler. There were two other possible options. First was that this boiler was of a more modern design then the Central boilers, which is entirely possible. The second was that this was not a stationary boiler at all, but was in fact a locomotive boiler.

Here’s a diagram of the boiler as we found it. Its bottom half consists of the fire box at its back end along with a the dozen or so tubes running along its length. In boilers these tubes cold of been used for water or for heat. Due to the fact that they’re clearly connected to the fire box I would surmise that they were used to transport heat from the fire – known as “fire tubes”. Doors are set into both ends of the boiler, the small coal-feeding door at its back end and a larger half-circle door at its front end (that door is missing, but its hinges can still be seen). Protruding out of the boiler’s front end is that small funnel like opening attached to the boilers upper half.

Looking at this diagram its my opinion that the boiler in fact belonged to a locomotive. The upper half would contain the water and the fire tubes down its length would have been used to heat that water. The gasses passing through the tubes would have entered a flue stack once attached to the boiler’s front. The missing section of the boiler’s back end could have contained the rest of the fire box and ash trap. And that odd funnel thing might have been used to fill the thing with water.

But that’s all just a guess. Perhaps someone else out there has a more plausible answer?